The SHN #50: My Confession, Posture, and ASCVD

Welcome back to The Synergetic Health Newsletter! 

In this edition, I have a confession to make.

After that, some easy to follow posture tips.

Then comes some facts about life expectancy and lifestyle factors affecting heart health.

Finally, I’ll include some links to things I’ve found particularly interesting recently.

Joe Burt

🇬🇧 Greetings From London, England!

As we arrive at the 50th edition of this newsletter, I want to take a moment to reflect on my personal journey and share some honest thoughts with you.

Over the years, my beliefs and perspectives have evolved significantly. In the first half of my adult life, I was firmly rooted in science and atheism. However, I gradually began exploring spiritual views and alternative health practices, sometimes to the point of dismissing conventional medicine and science. I read countless spiritual books, practiced meditation and mindfulness, and engaged in various esoteric and mystical practices.

While I have undoubtedly gained valuable insights from some of these experiences, I now realize that I may have taken things too far at times. I gave more credence to individuals without proper expertise or credentials and prioritized my feelings over scientific evidence. I found myself drawn to spiritual language and metaphysical claims, even when my instincts questioned certain people or ideas.

It has been easy to fall into the trap of fear-mongering and mistrusting pharmaceutical companies, vaccines, and authoritarian organizations. While these institutions have often broken our trust, it’s crucial to approach each topic critically and rationally, acknowledging our biases and seeking evidence-based information.

I now find myself at a point where I can appreciate both science and spirituality, striving to find a middle ground. I recognize the importance of navigating the practical aspects of our capitalist society while not entirely abandoning the mystical and magical. However, I also understand that relying solely on hope, prayer, or the belief that everything will work out is wishful thinking.

Moving forward, I pledge to document my search for truth more transparently in this newsletter. I acknowledge that I have displayed biases in the past and have sometimes trusted sources that may not have deserved it. I commit to being more open to various perspectives, offering alternative viewpoints when necessary, and maintaining a more skeptical attitude towards claims lacking evidence-based support.

While I believe there are many things science has yet to fully understand, I will not disregard its importance in the process. I will continue to explore the potential of alternative health interventions and new perspectives alongside evidence-based information, giving you as full a picture as I can so you can come to your own conclusions.

Thanks for reading 🙂 

🧍These Simple Posture Tips Are Money

Back to my favorite internet physical therapist, Zac Cupples, who recently had a short and simple post on how to improve your posture.

In the accompanying video, Cupples challenges common misconceptions about good posture, such as standing straight with shoulders back, chin tucked, and hips curled. This posture is unsustainable and impractical for everyday life.

Here are Cupples’ tips to improve your posture:

Shift weight onto your heels: Most people shift their weight forward onto their toes, which can cause the lower back to arch, lower ribs to flare, and head to jut forward, leading to stiffness. Shifting weight onto the heels helps open up rotation and relax the back, improving posture.

Use breathing to control lower back position: Breathing affects the rib cage and pelvic posture. Take a slow 5-10 second inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth to bring the lower ribs into a better position, fixing the lumbar spine position. Maintain this with chill nasal breathing throughout the day.

Exaggerate arm swing while walking: Exaggerating arm swing helps improve trunk rotation, opening up mobility. This teaches you how to utilize the new mobility gained from the previous tips.

Look as far out as possible: Forward head posture is often a compensatory strategy for breathing issues. Eye muscle convergence while looking at screens or the ground can increase focusing strain in the eye muscles and neck. Looking as far out as possible in the environment helps relax the eye muscles and upright posture.

For more practical tips on helping with all manner of physical issues and movement dysfunctions, check out Zac’s YouTube page.

⌛ Seven Things You Didn’t Know About Life Expectancy

Science researcher Saloni Dattani, author of this excellent article about life expectancy, concludes that “longevity isn’t one obscure problem that needs to be ‘cracked’ in order for us to live longer. We’ve been able to reduce mortality and delay death by continuously working on a wide range of problems.”

I recommend reading the article but here are the seven things:

1. We tend to live longer than our life expectancy implies

2. The annual risk of death has declined across age groups

3. Life expectancy is about gains across age groups – but declines in child mortality now make smaller contributions to overall gains

4. Death rates have declined from cardiovascular diseases and cancers

5. Women tend to live longer than men because of lower death rates across their lives…

6. Lifespan inequality has been falling

7. The limits of life expectancy are being pushed higher

Subscribe to Dattani’s publication.

❤️ Lifestyle Factors as Determinants for Heart Health

Atherosclerosis is a peer-reviewed journal established in 1970. On May 10th of this year, they published a review article called “Lifestyle factors as determinants of atherosclerotic cardiovascular health.” The review's abstract offers the following familiar advice:

“A sedentary lifestyle, low levels of physical activity and fitness, poor dietary patterns, and psychosocial stress are strongly associated with increased morbidity and mortality from atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD). Conversely, engaging in regular physical activity, maintaining optimal fitness levels, adhering to a heart-healthy dietary pattern, effectively managing body weight, ensuring adequate sleep, implementing stress-reduction strategies, and addressing psychosocial risk factors are associated with a reduced risk of ASCVD.”

The review does a great job looking comprehensively at physical activity, diet, and psychological stress in relation to ASCVD risk, but notes that other behaviors such as drug and tobacco use, sleep patterns, and night shift work also would impact risk and progression of disease.

The findings are nicely summarized in the following two pictures:

While many will argue the nuances of achieving proper health (including myself often), this set of basic guidelines outlined in the review article offer tried-and-true advice for lowering your risk of developing ASCVD.

𝕏 Thread of the Week

🧍 The Truth About Body Dysmorphia: This is a fascinating video by Will Tennyson which offers a deep look into the mental health condition of body dysmorphia. I’ve absolutely been affected by this disorder and it’s extremely common in today’s Instagram world. Props to Will for being open to discussing his own history with the disorder and highlighting how it’s an issue for millions of people. There’s a ton of interviews with real people which highlight how self-conscious people can be about their bodies.

💉 A Man Who Received 217 Covid Vaccines Had No Side Effects: A German man who received 270 vaccine doses “did not report any vaccination-related side effects”, has no sign of ever being infected by Covid, and had a normal immune response to other infections.

The case report published in The Lancet showed that “SARS-CoV-2 hypervaccination did not lead to adverse events and increased the quantity of spike-specific antibodies and T cells without having a strong positive or negative effect on the intrinsic quality of adaptive immune responses.” The authors don’t endorse hypervaccination but this is an interesting report on an extremely hot-button issue.

☀️ The Shocking Truth About Skin Cancer: If you have been with me this long and you still think the sun to be avoided at all costs, I’m not sure what to say. This long article has it all: the monopolization of medicine, the plethora of benefits to sun exposure, a deep dive into all skin cancers, the Great Dermatology Scam-argued to be “the most desired speciality”, and how to manage skin cancer and sun exposure.

While I am definitely still on Team Sun, sensible exposure is still prescribed. Besides being terribly uncomfortable, there has been associative data that links severe sunburns with melanoma. But there’s also this research: “Rare and deadly melanomas not caused by the sun”, “Melanoma is not caused by the sun”, and “Avoidance of sun exposure is a risk factor for all-cause mortality.”

All of this leads to me to conclude: expose yourself to the sun as often as you can/enjoy, but stop well short of burning your skin.

🔗 One Hitters

💧 Consider stopping drinking bottled Poland Spring Water (Mucho plastico)

💉 Doctors gets paid a $400 commission if they vaccinate your kid 10+ times before age two (Link) A conservative estimate of babies who fit this category is 80% (of 3.6 million babies born in 2023 is 2.88 million) X $400= $1.152 billion. The doctors may be totally right in recommending all these vaccines, but it looks like they have quite a financial incentive to do so, as well.

🤸🏻‍♀️ Five stretches you should be doing every morning (Video)

✔️ That will do it for this time! Hopefully you got some value out of it. If you have any questions/comments/things you’d like to learn more about please don’t hesitate to reach out.

🔗 If you know anyone who loves learning about these types of topics, send them this link!

📰 To read all past newsletters, go here.

📖 Read “Accelerated SELF-Development” and the accompanying "Resources”